Did Company Illegally Evict Medicaid Recipients?      

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There are stories about individuals and families having some issues with services through Medicaid because of misunderstandings with providers or not understanding their coverage.  Sometimes mistakes are made and must be fixed.  The majority of the time providers try to work with Medicaid recipients to provide the best service they can.

In New Jersey, however, there is a company that has been in the news lately for doing just the opposite.  This story has been touched on before, but there are more details continuing to come out.

The company, Assisted Living Concepts, based in Wisconsin has a large number of assisted living facilities.  As in any business, some things work well and turn out right and some things sometimes do not.  There are many excellent assisted living companies throughout the country who work hard every day to balance their budgets, help the residents – whether on Medicaid or not – and deal with issues – especially financial ones – that come up.

Unfortunately, at least in this case, Assisted Living Concepts has handled a situation with eight of its facilities in South Jersey in a harmful and totally inequitable way.  In these particular facilities, Assisted Living Concepts had a number of individuals staying there and receiving service who were paying for their services out of their life savings.  The individuals say that they were told that if their savings ran out, they would be switched to Medicaid and could stay where they were in Assisted Living Concepts facilities. 

Instead, when their savings were totally gone – because they had been paid to Assisted Living Concepts for their care – they were told that they had to leave.  A complaint was made and a few weeks ago the Public Advocate began an attempt to review records to see how many more individuals were – or had been – in this position with Assisted Living Concepts. 

The case has gone to Superior Court, and a judge will decide on whether the records will be released for review.  The case is difficult because, though all Assisted Living facilities are supposed to keep 10% of their beds for Medicaid recipients (in New Jersey), some are exempted.  The lawsuit being brought by these eight evicted residents has to do with the promises that were made to them that after they used their funds – in one case over $300,000 - they would be able to stay and be switched to Medicaid.  These promises were broken, and it is not known how many other promises to other individuals were handled the same way. 

It is important to get to the bottom of this so that individuals who are most vulnerable are not taken advantage of in this (or other) ways, but are protected by the system and by the individuals and organizations who are supposed to serve them.

Entry Filed under: General-Medicare